Wednesday, December 5, 2012

MORE UNTOLD STORIES

﻿In yesterday’s bloggy thing, Sean Howe’s Marvel Comics: The UntoldStory and my sadness reading it were discussed. There was a tearymoment or two, some guarded praise, underplayed aversion to Howe’ssensationalistic approach to the material, a personal revelation ortwo and, finally, the start of my discussing the handful of timesI was mentioned in the book. We continue...

From page 135:

...McGregor welcomes a revolving door of proofreading partners:first Tony Isabella, and then Doug Moench, from Chicago, and thenDavid Anthony Kraft, a seventeen-year-old from Georgia. Each ofthem was a writer as well and each of them shared an understanding:you leave alone my stuff and I’ll leave alone yours.

During the period when I was doing some proofreading on the colorcomics, I was helping Don McGregor and Marv Wolfman, who I recallcame on staff around the same time I did...though I think I mighthave been there first. But the proofreading was in addition to mywork on the British weeklies, on FOOM Magazine and assisting StanLee on Monster Madness, a mostly photos-and-gags magazine witha smattering of assigned-and-edited-by-me articles. On days whenRoy Thomas worked at home, I also wrote some color comics covercopy, but only on the reprint titles. I was fast and I was good atall of the above jobs, which is why I wore so many hats.

What Howe calls an “understanding” was unspoken at best. I thinkit was more common courtesy than anything else.

From page 157, Bill Mantlo is quoted:

“It seemed at the tune that the key to being a successful Marvelwriter was that you had worked for two companies, that made youbetter than all the hacks like me and Claremont and Moench who’dbegun at Marvel, stayed with Marvel, and were loyal to Marvel. Infact, financially, if you quit Marvel and went to DC, you couldcome back to Marvel at a higher rate than somebody who stayed atMarvel. It was a sign of success to shit on the company, gosomewhere else, and then come back, and Chris [Claremont], Doug,and I, and maybe Tony at that point, were left cleaning up themanure, without thanks, without reward. That went on for quite awhile. There was also a theory that if you were Editor, you weresupposed to write the Hulk, Spider-Man, and Thor. Maybe FantasticFour. It fluctuated, depending on who your favorite characterswere when you were fifteen. That was what ‘Editor’ meant at Marvel.Not that you were someone who was efficient, who was a goodadministrator, or who was an excellent writer in his own stead -being an editor at Marvel meant that now you should be able towrite whatever the top books were considered to be and everyoneelse got the dregs.”

That’s a long quote and I only present it in its entirety becausea few things will become important when I talk about something thatalmost no one knows about my time at Marvel. Of course, that talewill be in tomorrow’s bloggy thing because I am a heartless tease.

It seems to me Mantlo’s quote covers more years than I was workingat Marvel in the 1970s. I certainly did my share of jumping in towrite late books, but there was less of that by the time Bill andChris and Doug were on board. My own duties editing several black-and-white magazines, putting together FOOM Magazine with almost nobudget, supervising the work of others on the British weeklies and pitching in to help Roy, Stan and Sol on this and that pretty muchtook me out of the emergency fill-in squad. In fact, because of myworkload and a later move back to Ohio, Chris and Bill would fillin for me on frequent occasions. They’re the real heroes of savingMarvel’s butt and they never got the credit they deserved for doingthat time and time again.

Page 158 has an abridged but accurate account of my creation of TheChampions. On several occasions, I’ve written about the editorialmeeting wherein my concept of an Angel/Iceman/Route 66/buddy bookwas transformed into something quite different. It should be noted that,
while it was Wein who issued his imperial pronouncements on what
heroes had to comprise a super-hero team, I chose the heroes who
filled those positions.

Page 185 has a fairly accurate account of Jim Shooter changing thefinal chapter of my two-year-long Ghost Rider story involving JesusChrist. Howe doesn’t seem to give any credence to Shooter’s claimof being ordered to do this by Marv Wolfman or Gerry Conway. Butthis is one of those “I was there” events; Shooter told me face-to-face he was offended by the story. Religious propaganda? Hardly.Yes, Johnny Blaze was saved from Satan’s power in my version of thescript, but it was my intent - stated to each of the three editorsI had during those two years - to move away from the supernaturaltone of the series and make it more of a super-hero series, albeitone that would take inspiration from Simon and Kirby’s Stuntman andother Hollywood adventures.

Page 188 states that incoming editor-in-chief Gerry Conway would bewriting Ghost Rider...“vacated by an angry Tony Isabella.” That’sa simplistic take on my leaving my signature title, understandablebecause of its relative lack of importance, but not 100% accurate.I was angry and I did leave Ghost Rider. However, the leaving wasbecause I was fired by my friend Gerry - and we are friends - justbefore I could tell him I was quitting Marvel and going over to DC.That’s another long story I’ve already told, so don’t expect me torepeat it here. If you do some web-searching, I’m sure you’ll beable to find one of my previous tellings of that tale.

I’m mentioned one more time in Howe’s book...in a paragraph on LenWein’s short time as Marvel’s editor-in-chief: As the writer andeditor of Amazing Spider-Man, Incredible Hulk, Fantastic Four andThor, four of Marvel’s biggest titles, Len Wein should have felt ontop of the world. But he was quibbling with John Verpoorten, goinginto a rage over such minor details as, say, which letterers werebeing hired. He was challenging Chris Claremont and Tony Isabellaon the way they used characters borrowed from his titles.

Quoting Len directly:

I had become obsessively involved with the books. I was watchingmy books with such a hawk-like eye I had no sense of perspective onthis stuff anymore.

I like Len Wein and admire his writing, though I think his DC workis much better than his Marvel work. But, when he got the editor-in-chief job, he would frequently make ridiculous statements as ifhe were dispensing commandments from on high.

When I was writing Luke Cage, Power Man, he told me the title herodidn’t have super-strength. He claimed Cage was able to punch throughstone prison walls because he could hit the walls over and over againwithout feeling any pain. Except, without super-strength, such anescape would take hundreds of years. The Luke Cage issues beforeLen’s brief time as the book’s writer clearly showed that the herohad super-strength. Just as did my issues. Because, after makingone awkward fix to appease Len, I just ignored his ill-considerededict. He never brought it up again.

We had another clash when Ghost Rider defeated the Hulk by way ofwhat I thought was an extremely clever way for Johnny Blaze to notget killed by a much more powerful opponent. While the Hulk mighthave some of the strongest lungs on the planet, I figured he wouldstill have to take a deep breath to make that work for him. So Ihad Ghost Rider create a fiery tornado around the Hulk before theHulk could take that deep breath. Len reacted as if this was somekind of blasphemy.

This time, I addressed his concern in a Ghost Rider letters column.I cajoled Marie Severin into drawing a cartoon of the Hulk sittingand holding the Ghost Rider’s smoking skull in “Alas, poor JohnnyBlaze” contemplation. Yes, I explained as if I were explaining itto a child, the Hulk was much stronger than the Ghost Rider and, ifthe Ghost Rider had faced him head-on, the Hulk would have punchedhim into little pieces. Len was either satisfied by this cartoonor resigned to my being uncooperative.

Come back tomorrow for the most untold Marvel Comics story of themall. It’s a tale I’ve only recently pieced together as best as I can, calling
upon the vast wisdom of my advanced years and a more nuanced
consideration of certain events.

7 comments:

I'm just beginning to learn about the British Weeklies of the 1970s (I have quite a number of the Spider-Man weeklies and Avengers, also Dracula. I would love to know more. Apologies these posts read anonymous, I haven't figured out the technology yet. Randall Barlow (aka RJB).

The Hulk run-in with Ghost Rider you mentioned is one of my favorite GR stories ever, and I loved the way the Rider, with help from his cross-country race companions and competitors, managed to to take down the green Goliath. I didn't realize until now it was one of yours. :)